IGNFF: What kind of agenda irritates you the most?

WHEDON: Any agenda. Any agenda beyond what the film itself is trying to say. My biggest concentration was gender studies and feminism. That was sort of my unofficial minor. That was what all my film work was about, but at the same time, somebody bringing the knee-jerk feminist agenda to a text can be the most aggravating thing in the world. Especially if you're a feminist, because you're like, "You're the person that everybody makes fun of. You're the reason why we've got no cred."

IGNFF: Planting subtext for subtext's sake...

WHEDON: Yeah, planting subtext based on everybody brings their own experience to a film – that's why films are popular, and that's fine. As long as they're working from the film outwards, towards themselves. What people with an agenda do – whether it be, like, Cartesian physics or some thing I can't begin to understand, or feminism, or anything – they try and shove it in. "Look at this this way." Okay, let's look at the film as it exists, what it is, what it's trying to do. We can judge it. But you're talking to somebody who was raised to be a radical feminist, who thought that liberals were wishy-washy and who loves Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. So you know, this conflict's around always. Take the film at its own value, and then go to the other place.

IGNFF: Was that part of your motivation for taking gender studies for a minor?

WHEDON: It's not that I took it for a minor, it's just like I pursued it in everything I did. It's always what interested me. But, when you're dealing with feminism you're dealing with a lot of people who understand feminism better than they understand film, and again you pose something and that doesn't just go ... the point is, you can have an agenda as long as you let the film come to you and take that out of you. I know a guy who could not get through a paper without talking through Freudian theories of infantile sexuality. And his lecture on The Wild Bunch, in terms of Freudian theories of infantile sexuality, was actually fascinating. Because he loved The Wild Bunch, he understood the movie, and then he let it speak to him. He didn't try and like shove in a theory.

IGNFF: Meeting his mother would be interesting...

WHEDON: Yes...

IGNFF: Going back a little bit, was it your choice to go overseas to Winchester – to what, I guess, was essentially high school?

WHEDON: Yes. My mother suggested it, because she was on sabbatical, and enjoyed England, and didn't trust the schools in California where my father was. So I was to go for half a year, because she was taking a half a year sabbatical. I bizarrely managed to get into the single best school in the country, through no merit of my own. I really don't know how that happened. I was lazy, I was terrible, but through osmosis, I was learning more than I ever had before. It was so extraordinary. My family went back to America, and the school asked me to stay along, and I did.

IGNFF: So you got to be the standard there, as the token lazy American.

WHEDON: I was the token lazy American, except when it came to English class, where I was relentless and unstoppable.

IGNFF: How palpable was the cultural difference, going to that school, compared to the American schools you'd gone to previously?

WHEDON: Well, let's see. I went from Riverdale, a fairly progressive private school that my mother taught at, where I'd gone for ten-and-a-half years, since first grade – because it went all the way through, K-12. I went from that, having never been out of the country, to a 600-year-old all male boarding school where I actually listened to a lecture on why co-education will never work. The cultural difference couldn't have been huger. The only thing that was the same was that, like at Riverdale, I had no money and was surrounded by very rich people.

IGNFF: That lecture had to appeal to the radical feminist in you...

WHEDON: Yeah. Well, you know, there's plenty of arguments that co-education is actually bad for girls in the present state of the country. But that was not his argument. Put it this way – at the end of it, I was like, "Sir, don't you think if God had wanted man to fly he would have given us wings?" It was very, very strange.

IGNFF: So, technically, you were never in a traditional public school...

WHEDON: No, I never was.

IGNFF: Did you ever feel, personally, that you missed out on anything? Or do you feel that the course you took was actually a benefit?

WHEDON: Well, you know, Riverdale was a good school. Winchester was a great school. An incredible school.

IGNFF: What aspects of it made it incredible?

WHEDON: It was literally rated the best education you could get in the country. I wish that I could have made some moves on a girl at some point in my high school career, but that probably wasn't going to happen at Riverdale, either. Which is one of the reasons why I stayed at Winchester. Socially, every boy that comes out of Winchester was completely pathetic. Intellectually, it was a staggering gift to be able to be around that much intelligence.

IGNFF: Did you feel that you were missing out on social aspects?

WHEDON: No, no. You know, I had very good friends. I had very good pot. I snuck out to London overnight to get shows. I was lonely, but I was just as lonely when I was around girls as when I wasn't.

IGNFF: Where did the loneliness stem from? It's interesting, because it seems to almost be a thread through the work you've done, if you look at Buffy and then even to Toy Story and – god forbid – Alien Resurrection. There's a certain aspect of isolation, an outsider to all the world...

WHEDON: I lived my life feeling alone. That's just the way of it. I always did. As soon as I was old enough to have a feeling about it, I felt like I was alone. No matter how much I loved my family – and I actually got along better with my family than I think most people do – but I just always felt separate from everybody, and was terribly lonely all the time. I wasn't living a life that was particularly different from anybody else's, a pariah – it wasn't like I didn't have friends, but I just... we all of us are alone in our own minds, and I was very much aware of that from the very beginning of my life. Loneliness and aloneness – which are different things – are very much, I would say, of the three main things I focus on in my work.

IGNFF: Was it ever a feeling that you felt you were different from anyone else?

WHEDON: I think everybody always feels they're different. I did feel different from the people around me. I've always felt that I was the outsider in every group I've ever been in, except my staff.

IGNFF: By nature or by design?

WHEDON: Well, you know, it wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to be a part of a group. But I felt like Luke Cage in the Fantastic Four, you know – no matter what. That's just always been the way. You know, very often you'll be in a group and you'll discover that every single person in it feels like they're the one on the perimeter. It's like everybody has their own moment that's going on, some more than others. It was just a huge theme for me, and it was a huge theme that sort of crystallized in adolescence. Because, really, not having a girlfriend... I wish I could say I was above caring about that ...

IGNFF: Was it a loneliness that ever went into depression?

WHEDON: Oh yeah, but not the kind of depression where you don't do anything. I was depressive, melodramatic ...

IGNFF: Yet productive.

WHEDON: Not if you were my Russian teacher. But productive, yes, actually. Something always going on, some scheme, some art. You know, in the worst of it, I would write, not really realizing that I was writing. I didn't think of myself as a writer per se, but yeah, I was always trying to communicate something – even if I was just, "Pay attention to me!"

IGNFF: But you were writing to yourself, so it really didn't accomplish much, did it?

WHEDON: Yeah, you point that out now.

IGNFF: There's a certain logical disconnect there, but I guess there is in all teenage writing.

WHEDON: Yeah, it's weird now, because with the Internet, much teenage writing is for the consumption of everybody in the universe. Had there been the Internet, I probably would have been on it like a bandit. But yeah, you're right, the writing and the drawing that I did to express myself, I really did for myself. But always in the hope of eventually creating something that would speak to people. Part of the desire to communicate, which to me is the most important part of art, is the desire to be heard, which is entirely selfish.

IGNFF: So it's a large-form attempt at attention.

WHEDON: Then beyond attention comes, you know, the other half – the desire to connect. That is the unselfish part of that desire.

IGNFF: Do you think that, through creative means, the connection is still – for all intents and purposes – at arms length?

WHEDON: Well, it's not like I'm going out hugging everybody that watches my show – although I probably could in about half an hour, because we really don't have that big an audience.

IGNFF: It's time for the goodwill tour.

WHEDON: Goodwill tour... or, as I call it, ComicCon. No, I mean, the thing about the art is that the communication is both sides. The selfishness of, "Please hear me," and the beauty of, "I hear you." The beauty of here's something that you're going through, that you're lonely, and I know what it's like, so here's that presented to you. That's the best thing about the show and everything they do, when people go, "I feel less alone because I saw this, because I saw someone go through it. I saw someone be rejected, I saw somebody hurt, I saw whatever it was. I saw her getting stronger, and it made me stronger, too."

IGNFF: I guess to some extent, with the safety net of it also being a finished work that's presented for those connections, it's an intermediary between creator and audience.

WHEDON: Well, I could call a lot of people and go, "Hey, I'm lonely, too." They're probably going to just hang up or call the police.

IGNFF: Yeah, but that's what the Internet's for.

WHEDON: Yes, I guess it is, but that's not the medium I was raised on. I don't know how to wield it.

IGNFF: Did Winchester facilitate a creative bent, or was it mostly an extracurricular sort of thing?

WHEDON: Most of the things that I've done that have been truly creative have been extracurricular. However, stories that I've written have gotten me recommendations, which was nice. At Winchester, they tried to squash a lot of things. Certainly everything I wore or said bothered them, but at the same time I studied classic literature and drama with some of the greatest teachers out there. You couldn't help but become more creative.

IGNFF: How far back does your love of Shakespeare go?

WHEDON: As far back as I can remember. I used to read plays when I was a kid. As soon as I was old enough to get through a play, the first one I remember reading were Henry IV...

IGNFF: It would have been so much different if you'd started with a comedy.

WHEDON: "For god's sake, give me A Midsummer Night's Dream, boy..." When they started doing them on the BBC, they did the entire canon on the BBC for a budget of like 12 dollars.

IGNFF: That's quite lavish for the BBC.

WHEDON: I know, it was a big deal back then. I used to watch them ...

IGNFF: At least they're finally making their way to DVD.

WHEDON: Are they?

IGNFF: Yes. Slowly but surely.

WHEDON: It's hilarious, how little money they had, but at the same time I still think some really good stuff went on there, and it was very formative for me.

IGNFF: Do you think, to some extent, that's when Shakespeare works best? When there isn't a lot of artifice to draw the eye away?

WHEDON: No, I think Shakespeare works when it's emotionally true. It can be done on a bare stage. Actually, we had a reading of Lear yesterday, at my house, sitting around out by the garden. So it's not heavy with production values. But I also think it can work completely gussied up, as long as everything is working towards emotional truth, what's going on. But sometimes great big elaborate sets and special effects can help with that. There's nothing wrong with lavish productions.

IGNFF: Were there certain elements that struck cords with you, especially at that early age, reading something like Henry V?

WHEDON: I didn't read Henry V until I was older. I, by coincidence, spent most of the time studying – the hardest and deepest and most in-depth times – studying Hamlet.

IGNFF: By coincidence.

WHEDON: Yes. Well, it turned out that way, because I was studying for A levels, which meant you really studied one play for months.

IGNFF: Your choice for the play, or the instructor's?

WHEDON: It was not the instructor's choice – it was whatever play was on the A levels that year. And because I actually wasn't planning on going to university in England, the tests themselves were not that important, so I started on A level English when I got there, which was above – I was still at O-levels in everything else. Then sort of bumped back to a different A level ... I think Lear and Othello were the main ones for the second one, but for the first we studied Hamlet. This was a thing where, in A levels, your getting into a decent university depends on three tests. That's it. You spend the last two years of high school studying for those three tests, and you choose your three subjects. It's very odd, but it's also great because I didn't have to take math or science.

IGNFF: Damn you!

WHEDON: Well, that's why my wife does the bills... When the bills come and I go, "What's a decimal?" So we'd have class for an hour and twenty minutes, like in college, and then there'd be three more hours until dinner, and we'd just stay. We'd just stay and keep talking. Some of them were doing it because they were desperate to get good grades, they wanted to get into Oxford or Cambridge. One of them mentioned to me, "You know, Joss, you're not taking the A levels, you don't have to stay." "Dude, where else would I be?" It was amazing. Four hours at a stretch, great scholars and a great teacher completely prying open the text of Hamlet. I mean, what more fun can there be? ... Spoken like a man who never had sex in high school ...

IGNFF: Do you think, again, that Winchester – and the type of school it was – facilitated that kind of study? As opposed to a public school, say, in the United States?

WHEDON: Yeah. You know, my sister-in-law teaches for L.A. USC, which I think – just two more miracles and she's eligible for Sainthood... or at least martyrdom. You just don't get that level. You do occasionally, but it's always the exception to the rule. Having a private school education was a huge benefit for me. If I could actually make a mission out of my life, it would be to get our public schools up to that kind of level. To get education to become important to anybody in the country. It's so dispiriting to see kids not be given the opportunity to find out that learning is the most fascinating and useful thing there is.

IGNFF: So when will that become a crusade for you?

WHEDON: I'm not sure. I'm not a great crusader. Don't really know how to go about it.

IGNFF: Well, making statements in a positive direction's a start.

WHEDON: Yeah.

IGNFF: What direction will you be pushing, now that you're a father? Would you try to avoid sending your child to a public school?

WHEDON: We've talked about it. He's five months old. So right now, it's more about poo. Big decisions, mostly involve poo, and then we'll figure out what we want. We want him to get the best education he can. We want the public schools to be able to provide that. We're basically two dumb teenagers who had a kid by mistake – except that I'm nearly 40 and we've been married for 8 years. But it feels like the other thing. So we haven't quite mastered the whole thing. We've talked a lot about it, but we don't know.

IGNFF: One day it's poo, the next day it's SATs...

WHEDON: Exactly, exactly. Which are very similar to poo.

IGNFF: And also disposable.

WHEDON: The more schools become about tests – the A level sitting was different, because you literally spent two years studying texts, so the tests are very much about your grown-up understanding of what you're doing. It's a different test. It's a real test.

IGNFF: So it's not just memorization...

WHEDON: Yeah. Testing – multiple-choice, memorization, standardization – is the death of American education.

IGNFF: There's a fascinating book about that that just came out, The Language Police, about the dumbing down of standardized testing and text books in the U.S.

WHEDON: I found the SATs to be a joke when I took them. I came home for vacation one summer and it was like, "Surprise, you have to go take the SATs" "What?"

IGNFF: That's quite a welcome.

WHEDON: So I just did, but I was like, "That's what college is based on?"

IGNFF: What U.S. students sweat over for two years...

WHEDON: That's not an indication of an education.

IGNFF: What factors started to lead to your choice of schools post-Winchester?

WHEDON: Well, Jesus, I wanted to get out of England. I love it, and it's like a home to me, and I literally think about spending my twilight years there – but you know, I'd been there three years and wanted to get back to America. I had never really sort of gotten America. I went back and studied it, learned about it. I was excited. I was like, "I'm interested in being American now." Then I visited a bunch of schools, and Wesleyan just kind of... we clicked. There was something about it. I am well aware, and was at the time, that it may have been the weather. It may just have been a nice day. So that's the only school that I applied to.

IGNFF: That's a better criteria than most kids apply to what schools they choose.

WHEDON: Yeah. No, I visited a few.

IGNFF: Which ones did you turn down? Which aspects turned you off?

WHEDON: It's not like anybody was begging for me. I was clearly a ne'er-do-well. And, in fact, when we got into Wesleyan, in our packet of information, I had no grades. I had a lot of reports that said, "He seems to be intelligent, but I wouldn't say he applies himself terribly much."

IGNFF: So you had "artist" written all over you.

WHEDON: Oh god, from day one. I knew that I would never be man enough to have a real job. I literally would be, "Why am I thinking about this paper on the Crusades when I should be watching Manhattan," at our tiny little local theater, "and learning about film?" Even when I was in high school – "That's where I'm going. That's what I need to know about."

IGNFF: Getting into Wesleyan, and what aspects appealed to you...

WHEDON: It was very artistic – and it's a weird thing, but I had sort of spent part of my formative years there, because two of the professors there were old friends of my folks from college. So I had actually gone to their house in Middletown, pretty much on campus, since I was a tiny boy. I got to stay with them, and their daughter Katie is a good friend, and she showed me around the campus when I visited. I actually had a friend who was already in the school, from Riverdale, so I really got a sense of the campus. It just felt right. I didn't even know who Jeanine Basinger was at the time. I didn't even know who Richard Slotkin was. I didn't know that they had the best film department.

IGNFF: At that time, Wesleyan wasn't really known for its film program.

WHEDON: Only among the initiated, after they wear the robe and get the tattoo ...

IGNFF: Like the Freemasons of film school.

WHEDON: Yeah, we were the Freemasons of film. I just got a good feeling. At that point, I didn't know if I was going to concentrate on film or theater, but I was so blown away by the film department, it clearly took over my life.

IGNFF: What would you say were the real strengths of the film department?

WHEDON: Again, people who understand theory in terms of filmmaking and film storytelling, and film mythos and film genre, better than anybody else does. Lectures that were so complete, so complex, so dense and so simple that I almost had trouble following them, and by the end would realize they were dealing with things that were already in me. They were already incorporated in the way I thought about story, because they are the American mythos. Just having that dissected and presented by people who understood the very basics from the brain of the film, to the Greek myth aspect of the story, to every single thing you could learn without actually making film yourself – when I say making the film, I mean coming to Hollywood and doing it – was there. I don't have a thought about story that is not influenced by those teachers.

IGNFF: Did it set you up well for actually making the transition to a professional career? I know you've mentioned in the past that it wasn't a contact school.

WHEDON: It was, in a low-key way, and now it's gotten bigger. I was hired as a research assistant by a grad, and that was set up by Jeanine. In my time here, I think I've hired at least five – some of whom who were hired by others who I didn't know were Jeanine students, or Wesleyan students, until after they were here. We have, every year, the Wesleyan get-together – and every year, an astonishing number of people who are working heavily in the film industry and bright new people coming up. A lot of the people who are ten years behind me are doing really well, and it grows.

IGNFF: Is there a palpable vibe about Wesleyan students to you?

WHEDON: You know, yes and no. There's a lot of different kinds. I mean, Michael Bay and I both came out of the same year, or we were maybe a year apart. Michael Bay, John Turteltaub and me. I wouldn't say that we're all brothers under the skin, artistically. Actually, I'm a fan of Michael's. Best eyes in the business.

IGNFF: If only he could find the best scripts...

WHEDON: Yeah, we tell stories differently, have different priorities. But, you know, it's not like everyone coming from Wesleyan is going to make the same kind of movie. There is a quirkiness to my generation that I think is very pleasing. The thing that is really important is it was not a school about connection. At some point, I thought it was going to become one. I was a little worried when I went back to visit – kids were like, "You know, I got the coverage on Die Hard III." And I was like, "Why are you talking to me about coverage? You should be getting done watching Johnny Guitar at 4:00 in the morning, that's what you should be doing. You should be seeing Day of the Outlaw – a bizarre, black and white, Andre de Toth Western that nobody can get hold of. You should not be reading about Hollywood yet." I think that that was just a phase. Those kids seem to have gone away.

IGNFF: I guess those were the kids who were doing second unit work on Pearl Harbor.

WHEDON: Maybe. I do think there is that very comprehensive, "Let's not study the business, let's study the movies."

IGNFF: So it's more focused on the art than the commerce.

WHEDON: Yes.

IGNFF: Did that make for a rough ride when you made your transition to Hollywood?

WHEDON: Yeah. It's not like I got set up with, "Go be this producer's assistant." I never really figured it that way. When I came out here and realized I was trying to make my way as a writer, I started writing spec scripts, and I was working in a video store – like, you know, all directors. At one point, because I was staying with my father, that's when my stepmother said, "Why don't you get a job as a production assistant, to get on a set like that while you're trying to breakthrough?" My father said, "Don't. Wait. You're going to get a job as a writer." Which was a huge vote of confidence – an extraordinary thing to say. So first job I ever had in the business was as a writer, and that's the only thing I did until I directed Buffy, and I was a director, too, and producer.

IGNFF: But it was in television.

WHEDON: Well, I'd been writing in television and movies and then producing.

IGNFF: But it was in the thing you had avoided for so long ...

WHEDON: I got over that the moment I started writing my first script, because I talked to a friend who said something very profound, I thought. Willie Garson went to Wesleyan as an actor. He's really good. We've been friends since college, and he was on my father's show, It's a Living. I said, "I'm starting to realize there's a lot of good, interesting work to be done on television." He said, "Yeah, there is. There is a lot of really good, artistic work with integrity that can be done, which you'll realize after your eighth year on That Nutty Moose." It's been sort of the great fortune and pride of my career that I have never had to work on that That Nutty Moose. The first job I ever got was on a show I cared deeply about.

IGNFF: That was, what, second season of Roseanne?

WHEDON: Yes.

IGNFF: How many specs had you written before landing that job?

WHEDON: Five.

IGNFF: For which shows were you writing specs for?

WHEDON: I wrote one for my father's show, It's a Living, just because I had seen it, and I had seen it being made, but I never showed that to an agent. There was a show called Just in Time that died before I finished my spec, but I had met the producer. He said, "Do you have anything to show me?" I said, "No, but if you give me the scripts to your show, I'll write one of those." I labored over that. I wrote a Wonder Years, that was its first year, and a Garry Shandling Show, the first one, and then a Roseanne. I got the Roseanne.

IGNFF: I would love to see your Wonder Years script...

WHEDON: Yeah, it was interesting. About getting mugged, which is one thing I researched extensively ... I had enormous love for it. Then, I got an offer to work on the show that I thought was one of the most important shows on TV.

IGNFF: The specs that you'd written, had you shown any of these to your father?

WHEDON: Yes. I showed them all to him.

IGNFF: What was the advice that you got back from him?

WHEDON: You know, he didn't give me advice. He just loved them. I was shocked. I was really excited. That was a big thing, you know?

IGNFF: Did that push the fear of the "Three-G TV" out of your mind?

WHEDON: Fear of "Three-G TV" was gone, because I had seen good TV, and I had seen the process, and I had begun to understand where my biases had come from.

IGNFF: Did you view your father in a different light?

WHEDON: No, you know, I had always respected my father enormously, and seeing scripts of his that had never seen the light of day that were some of my favorite ones – I valued his approbation enormously. Didn't expect it. That gave me the courage to go on. It didn't make me go, "Oh, maybe TV's okay" – that I had to figure out for myself.

IGNFF: What was Roseanne like, going in at that time? They were on, what, the fourth or fifth set of producers by that point?

WHEDON: No, it was just the second set, and it was total chaos. I mean, it was like a studied chaos. Which was good, because it meant that I got to write a bunch of scripts.

IGNFF: Whereas, on other shows, you would have been locked in the writer's room as a junior writer...

WHEDON: You know, I remember one of my father's friends saying, "Have they let you start to write a script yet?" I was like, "Yeah, I'm on my fourth." Because they just... they had nobody. I ended up writing six scripts that year. Interestingly enough, the other staff writer I know who's done that was Marti Noxon. She did it in the second year of Buffy.

IGNFF: Because it was just complete chaos?

WHEDON: It wasn't not chaos. It was slightly more controlled chaos, but it was really chaotic.

IGNFF: How powerful was Roseanne becoming in the writer's room at that time?

WHEDON: Well, she was grouchy as hell. I had a bad experience, because my stuff kept getting rewritten by the producers before it ever got to her. So, you know, I never felt like I was being heard, until I finally actually found a temporary champion in Tom Arnold, who had started at the same time. He snuck around my script. So she got to see the first draft. Then, I had lunch with her to talk about it, and it was quite extraordinary. The good Roseanne came to lunch. She got it and she was very excited about it, and it was a really fascinating time.

IGNFF: How different from bad Roseanne did you find good Roseanne?

WHEDON: Well, literally the next day, I saw her walk by the office, look at me – and not only not recognize me, but not recognize that there was someone standing in front of her. I had never seen somebody like that before. I was like, "This is like the lady from Misery! Oh boy." It's so sad, because I went on that show because it had a feminist agenda, because it was real, and decent, and incredibly funny. And she brought a lot of that to the table – and she sort of took it away, because her unhappiness made her incredibly divisive and destructive, and that's that. There was a lot of good there.

IGNFF: How would it affect the scripts that were being written?

WHEDON: A lot. She'd be like, "This is crap, I won't do this." She'd just chuck things out.

IGNFF: Arbitrarily?

WHEDON: Yeah, and scripts didn't get better from being written two and a half days at midnight by Danny Jacobson. But, at the end of the day, it was a good stepping-stone, not a good experience. She's not the reason I quit. Having been rewritten almost to death, I got shut out of the process – and I thought the producers were talented and good friends, but I couldn't work for them anymore, because I don't like getting paid to do nothing.

IGNFF: Were there any second thoughts that, even though you were getting paid to do nothing, you were giving up a job – and it could have been the last job you had?

WHEDON: No, I never thought that.

IGNFF: Was there a confidence in your abilities in that something else will come?

WHEDON: I didn't really think of it as something else will come. I was working on the Buffy movie, and I've always felt like I could find work. I saved my first penny, the first dollar I ever made from TV I saved, so that I would never have to be in the position of working to keep up my life style, in order to make money.

IGNFF: So you weren't living hand to mouth...

WHEDON: I was doing fine, but it wasn't like I went out and rented a big house and got a car that worked.

IGNFF: So unlike a lot of writers, you were realistic.

WHEDON: I just wanted to be able to do work for one reason and one reason only, and that was because it was work worth doing. It is, I realized, through a great deal of luck and privilege that I've been able to hold to that. People always say, "Okay, you've just said that. Let's talk about Waterworld."

IGNFF: You know, I'm not. I'm going to ask you what lessons you learned from Roseanne when it came to being a show runner yourself.

WHEDON: You know what I learned? And this was one of the most important things I've ever learned, one of the defining things about humanity. It was when she made a speech at the beginning of the season about how the tabloids were really giving her s**t and how they were infiltrating the crew and stuff, people were feeding them stuff – "So you f***ing writers better keep your mouths shut or I'll have you all fired." I realized, this was the perfect opportunity to make a speech that brought everybody closer together, that said, "It's us against the world, and dammit, we've got good work to do here, let's all get it done" – and instead she used it to attack. It made me realize, at that moment, that every time somebody opens their mouth they have an opportunity to do one of two things – connect or divide. Some people inherently divide, and some people inherently connect. Connecting is the most important thing, and actually an easy thing to do. I try to make a connection with someone every time I talk to them, even if I'm firing them. Because a connection can be made. People can be treated with respect. That is one of the most important things a show runner can do, is make everybody understand that we're all involved, that we're all on the same level, on some level. I'm shocked that there are so many people that live to divide. Whether it's to divide people from each other, or from themselves – but it is a constant in everything. Trying to make a connection with somebody. It was Roseanne's sort of divisive nature that made that show to be less and less meaningful. Even though it still kept on doing good things and she had a lot of good intent, and I think she changed the landscape of American television. She should be credited for having done it. Although I also think Matt Williams deserves a lot of credit. The fact is, you lose people when you do that. If you're going to make television of any continued standard, or live in the world like a decent person, you can't afford to do that. You know? You have to bring out the best in your people and see it when it's there and nurture it and laud it, which is something I often forget to do. "Tell that guy he's good!" "Well, I didn't fire him, so he must know he's good, right?" "No, Joss. It doesn't work that way." I definitely miss out that people are having emotions all around me some times. But, at the same time, I do understand that we are in this together. You know, when I have a grip come up to me and say, "I really love the script." Or, "Oh, you know, I'm moving the camera, and this is the feeling that I get about how the story's told." That's the best thing in the world. Also, I think, be meaner – but that I had to learn later on.

IGNFF: How does it affect your mindset when you're not in control, when you're the one who's being mistreated in a business where P.A.s have more respect than the writer?

WHEDON: You know, she went on Letterman, said, "I hate the writers. I'm going to fire them all." And I was just devastated. I was like – from the movie Deep Rising, when the bad guy says, "I don't like you." The other guy says, "You don't even know me." I felt like, "How can you say that? You haven't even met us." Yes, I'm quoting a Stephen Sommers movie – my knowledge of film is that deep.

IGNFF: I applaud the fact that you're able to recall any of Deep Rising...

WHEDON: Hey! Deep Rising had some stuff... C'mon, man...

IGNFF: It's still the quality marker that a good writer friend of mine uses...

WHEDON: Quality, or lack...

IGNFF: He considers it one of the finest films ever made...

WHEDON: Okay, now we've gone a little far – but I do think it is a charming and underrated movie. And, I think, Famke Janssen's best work. And I'm not actually being facetious – I saw that movie and I thought, "My god, she's Julia Roberts. She's got it."

IGNFF: And then she lost it all with X-Men...

WHEDON: You know, I haven't seen the new one...

IGNFF: I haven't either. I'm just going by the first one. What was the genesis for Buffy, as a film script?

WHEDON: Again, you've heard the "Dark Alley" story, I'm sure...

IGNFF: Yes.

WHEDON: And that's true. I did want to make a movie where a poor girl that kills would have to get her own back. Then, I started out with "Martha the Immortal Waitress." The idea of somebody that nobody would take account of, who just had more power than was imaginable. Which is such a pathetically obvious metaphor for what I wanted my life to be. Like, "I'm the guy that nobody paid attention to. What they didn't know was that I'm really important. I can save the world. So, you know, that's pretty cool, too." In the interview, you have to say, "He whined." [Interviewer's note: Joss whined.] So, you know, when I hit on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was right around the time when Revenge of the Bimbos, or Attack of the Killer Bimbos or something – there were a lot of movies coming out that were proto-silly '50s style titles. They were on the video store shelves. I worked at a video store. I would watch them, and I'd be like, "You know what? This is just another bimbo movie. These women aren't empowered at all. They just made up a funny title." I was like, "I would like to make a movie that was one of these crappy, low-budget movies, that like the Romero films, had a feminist agenda, had females in it who were people, and had all the fun, all the silliness. Night of the Comet was a big influence. That actually had a cheerleader in it. With a title that would actually make people take it off the video store shelves, because it has to sound silly and not boring.

IGNFF: Where did the name Buffy come from?

WHEDON: It was the name that I could think of that I took the least seriously. There is no way you could hear the name Buffy and think, "This is an important person." To juxtapose that with Vampire Slayer, just felt like that kind of thing – a B movie. But a B movie that had something more going on. That was my dream. The network begged me to change the title. I was like, "You don't understand. It has to be this. This is what it is." To this day, everyone says, "Oh, the title kept it from being taken seriously." I'm like, "Well, f*** them. It's a B movie, and if you don't love B movies, then I won't let you play in my clubhouse." Now, I'm not an exclusionary person, I don't like to drive people away, but honestly, if people have trouble with that title ...

IGNFF: Well, they don't forget it.

WHEDON: You know, you're not wrong.

IGNFF: That's, what, three-quarters of the work a title's supposed to do?

WHEDON: Yeah. The other one-quarter is it's supposed to make you want to watch it. But, hey, at least I got three-quarters.

IGNFF: You're still in the majority. Everybody wins.

PARTIE II de l'interview